Sep 24th, 2008
People’s Republic of Wall Street?
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson raised some eyebrows when he announced his plan for a taxpayer-funded bailout of Wall Street, most notably because of the clauses that would allow him to spend $700 billion in taxpayer money without any oversight.
While political pundits managed to avoid head-on discussion of the financial crisis for the past 6 months by arguing back and forth on semantics as to whether or not this kind of action (i.e. the Bear Stearns rescue) is a 
“bailout,” those days are over. It’s bailout time.
In a nutshell: The Paulson plan proposes to use American taxpayer money to buy distressed mortages in order to prevent a banking collapse.
So: *will Main Street bail out Wall Street? And, if so: will we all get personalized thank-you notes from Freddie and Fanny?
Video: Jim Cramer from Mad Money Says PULL OUT of Stock Markets…
President Bush’s 700 billion bailout plan is not working because few have confidence the plan help and banks are not increasing lending. Furthermore, the bailout plan has yet to hit early benchmarks Paulson outlined during Capitol Hill testimony…
[...] efficacy of the Chrysler bailout, the state of the American economy as a whole, the fact that the taxpayers just bailed out a bunch of banks, GM CEO Richard Wagoner’s salary increase this year despite GM’s losses since 2005, the [...]
[...] though, Bernanke is synonymous with “bailout” – a trend that started with the $700 billion Paulson/Bush/Bernanke Wall Street bailout of 2008, continued through the auto bailouts, and is still relevant given the Obama stimulus [...]